A recent conference held by the Israel Builders Association in Eilat revealed the extent of criminal phenomena on construction sites throughout Israel. Most of them are not dealt with.
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Arie David, CEO of Arie Erez Building & Infrastructure, told the conference that the phenomenon has spread beyond the periphery. "Everything began in the South; it began as something small but when it reached the center of the country, then suddenly everyone woke. The solution is not the police, but the government. I say to the government, you must give them something to lose."
Commander Motti Schiff, head of investigations at the Israel Police Major Crimes Unit Lahav 433, said: "We agree that this phenomenon exists not just in the South and in the North. It may primarily exist there but it isn't just a problem. faced by contractors and it isn't just in the construction industry. When the Israel Police deals with 350,000 complaints a year and 10 million calls to its hotline, then obviously with just 32,000 police officers there are mistakes and we have to prioritize."
Dr. Samir Mohamad, mayor of Umm al-Fahm, also spoke at the conference. "It's unfortunate that people take the issue of protection and connect it to the Arab community," he said. "I have a friend who is a contractor in Ratana and pays protection to Jews. There is currently no law that deals with protection. We need legislation on the issue, and not everything is reported to Lahav 433. In 2021, only 10% of cases were reported to Lahav and the rest were reported to police stations. 105 cases." He added that the committee of heads of municipal authorities "is working and everyone can see that there is a decline [in protection rackets]. Today we see a drastic decline in everything connected to offenses of this nature in Arab society thanks to our work on the ground.
There is another issue, that of black market loans. This is also an extremely widespread phenomenon because of the difficulty in receiving mortgages in Arab society. Here as well, we are holding a dialogue with all government offices."
Commander Motti Schiff added: There are many other fields in which this happen, in landfills, in transportation, and many others. It is a problem of governance, a problem that costs the state of Israel a lot of money. A tender that is polluted will cost the state a lot more money. Security companies are small cash, the people active in this field became the security companies themselves a long time ago, and, yes, they kick people out of tenders. And if a contractor who wins a tender resigns, and then number two and three resign, the criminal organization can determine who will win.
"There has been an 87% increase in indictments and arrests and that is after people come to us once everything else hasn't worked for them. Today, it's not like a criminal comes up and puts a gun to your head. Today, offenses are economic. It takes 30 to 40 investigators and four to five prosecuting attorneys to work on a case like this. In the end. We need the contractors to come to us to complain. The Israel Police knows that this is its responsibility and does a lot, but it can't be just the police. In the end, everybody has to be involved: the tax authorities the courts, the state prosecution."
Tzvika David, deputy president of the Israel Builders Association said at the conference that "protection is the quiet plague of the infrastructure and construction sector. But it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to criminal offenses in the construction sector, which have become the norm. Perhaps the most serious offense is that 4000 construction sites operate without a site manager as required by law. In some cases, services are bought from site managers on an hourly basis and they then sign a false license for the site.
"It is noteworthy that in Israel there are currently 15,000 active construction sites and each construction site must have a site manager in charge of managing operations and safety. There is currently a shortage of over 5000 site managers in Israel. Some 400 site managers are currently retiring every month. Most of them are a product of the big wave of Aliyah from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and there is no one to replace them. So even if the state increases supply in the housing market to bring down prices, we won't be able to build because of a shortage of site managers. Many people don't want to work in the field because the criminal responsibility for every work accident falls on their shoulders.
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Assistant Police Commissioner (Res.) Eli Assayag, an adviser to The Foundation for the Encouragement and Development of the Construction Industry in Israel and formally a commander of the economic crime unit Lahav 433 said: The problem exists throughout the country and we are dealing with it on all fronts. In the past, we constructed a model that attacks the security companies economically. A case that is currently ongoing is that of a security company in the central region that took on all sorts of subcontractors, made threats, and didn't provide a proper service to the construction companies. Eventually, we built a case of several fraud offenses against them – predicate offenses against the banks, insurance companies, the Ministry of Economy, and the Ministry of Justice. When an offense is a predicate offense all the money that is taken in by the security companies constitutes the scope of the offense and what is left to do is to seize and impound all their property.
Moreover, he added: "Money laundering offenses are serious and complex. The Israel Police makes great efforts on this front. It demands a huge amount of work from other government ministries (the tax authority and the justice ministry. In practice, there aren't enough prosecutors and the state should have the sense to make the proper adaptations to the new challenges without involving civilians and to deal with the offenders directly and impound their property. The law is good enough. We just need to enforce it."
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